Messaging platform Telegram is launching Sponsored Messages, a tool that will allow anyone to promote their channels and bots.
Sponsored messages on Telegram will be shown only in large public one-to-many channels with over a 1000 members. These will be based solely on the topic of the public channels in which they are shown.
The platform further said that no user data will be mined or analysed to display Sponsored Messages.
"There will be no ads in chats on Telegram. If you use Telegram as the messenger that we launched in 2013 – you will never see a sponsored message. Sponsored messages can't appear in your chat list, private chats or groups," Telegram said in a statement.
"We are fixing ads that are already here. Some admins of one-to-many channels on Telegram already post ads in the form of regular messages. We hope that Sponsored Messages will offer a more user-friendly and less chaotic way for people to promote their channels and bots," it further said.
Sponsored messages are currently in test mode and are not available to all users.
Once they are fully launched and allow Telegram to cover its basic costs such as equipment and data centers that are used by channel admins to deliver their content to our hundreds of millions of users, the platform will plan to start sharing ad revenue with the admins of the channels where Sponsored Messages are displayed.